Triller is gaining traction as an advertising platform as marketers seek to reach a growing audience for user-created videos. Digitally native brands like Manscaped, L'Oréal's NYX Professional Makeup and legacy players including Pepsi recently have developed campaigns for Triller, the buzzy app that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to let users quickly produce professional-looking music videos.
User-created video has emerged as a valuable part of brands' mobile marketing strategies, punctuated by Reddit's acquisition of video-sharing social app Dubsmash this week and TikTok's explosive growth over the past two years. That meteoric popularity has led rivals including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat to crib the format and develop similar features for creating videos set to a music track.
"There's some magic into this style [of] using well-known music clips, allowing people to mash them up together — and you create this kind of purposeful palette where the intent is not about your friends, it's about a shared experience and fun," said Brian Bowman, founder and chief executive of Consumer Acquisition, an agency that specializes in marketing apps on social media. "That is what has changed at least from the experience side."
Beauty brands that were once early adopters of influencer marketing also are dipping their toes into newcomers like Triller. L'Oréal's NYX brand of cosmetics this month kicked off a campaign across Triller and Snapchat. The promotion revealed the beauty brand's spring 2021 collection and will include a virtual concert by singer Bebe Rexha and an augmented reality (AR) pop-up shop in Triller, according to an announcement.
The virtual store is the latest sign that Triller and Snapchat have developed a way to integrate their platforms after first announcing their collaborative efforts in March. At that time, the companies said they would give Snapchat users the option to post their self-made music videos to a story in Triller. In a stronger platform tie-in, NYX's campaign now looks to turn passive users of Snapchat into active participants — and potentially paying customers — through the Triller shop. It's an innovative way for the brand to extend its reach among younger audiences who are less likely to consume content on traditional channels like linear TV.
NYX's campaign also comes as Triller's audience shows significant growth. Earlier this year, it was one of the five most downloaded video-sharing apps in the U.S. and emerged as a potential rival to TikTok, according to a Sensor Tower estimate. As TikTok faced a stronger possibility of being banned in the U.S. earlier this fall, video apps including Triller and Likee expanded their share of downloads from 24% in January to 44% in August. As of early August, Triller reported 65 million monthly active users, though those figures haven't been confirmed by independent analytics companies.
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